The exhibition Cosmic Blues showcases works created through the use of images of natural realities, on both microscopic and sidereal scales.
The pieces refer to each other. Star clusters become microbes, corals and viruses merge, fireworks resemble sea urchins, plastic waste is fabulous, fish migrate in an aqueous substance that has come to be celestial.
Eco Spleen. We witness climate and environmental changes, sometimes wondering what forms art can take from now on. One can document and display these transformations, or depict them in a different kind of way. Perhaps even sublimate them excessively. One can do it all simultaneously. In beauty and melancholy.
— Alain Paiement
About the artist
Alain Paiement studied visual arts at the University of Quebec in Montreal, ENSAV / La Cambre in Brussels, and at the University of Paris 1. He is an associate professor at the École des Arts Visuels et Médiatiques at UQÀM.
Paiement’s research centers on the relationships between ordered structures and chaotic phenomena, at various scales, from micro to macro. He adopts a multidisciplinary approach, based on methods influenced by the geographical sciences.
His work has been featured in numerous national and international exhibitions since the 1980s. He recently took part in the exhibitions Views of Whithin at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Les énergies latentes : Paul-Émile Borduas au présent at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Globalscape/ Rethinking Collectivity exhibition, during the Guangzhou triennial (China), as well as in There all is order and beauty at Argos, Center for Art and Media, Brussels. The Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art presented his project Bleu de bleu in the fall of 2019.
He has produced several works that have been integrated into public architecture, including Ondes Croisées, in the University of Montreal’s science pavilion (2020), and Tessellations sans fin, in the CHUM’s Research Center, Montreal (2013). His research has been awarded several grants and prizes, including the Louis-Comtois prize in Montreal (2002).
